I'm having an issue. I just installed this on Linux, more specifically Debian Unstable, x86_64, but with i386 architecture support as well (for Steam and Steam games).
This game launches, and I see a menu screen with an animation of a rocket and with music, and there's a custom mouse pointer. However, clicking on the buttons has no effect. Using cursor keys doesn't seem to do anything either. I have to switch to a console window to close the game.
I bought this game a good while back, but just wanted to say I really like it! Very fun to multitask in. I recorded a full playthrough for anyone interested in seeing it beginning to end without commentary (pretty much taking a straight path to the end):
The only quality of life improvements that would be nice is being able to click on the minimap to move the camera around, and a hotkey for a 5th worker. I did change the 'Shift+Number' unit selection to just be a number which makes it a lot easier.
Feedback: It's a fun game but I have some suggestions. (Maybe for your next game!)
Lots of people have mentioned issues with the key layout. Since we switch character more often than we build, I don't think it makes sense to use Shift when switching character. We could put characters on plain 1,2,3,4, and for building/launching we could use Shift-1,2,3,4 or 7,8,9,0 or letter keys.
Sometimes I wanted to bring the character to the part of the map I am currently looking at (e.g. to meet up with a crew mate). But as soon as I select him, the camera moves to his location! One solution to that might be: Tab always jumps direct to the character's location. But when pressing 1,2,3,4 to select a character, the camera selects the player but doesn't jump to their location. Then I could press 2 and right-click, to bring the character onto the screen. If the key is pressed a second time (when the character is already selected), then the camera can jump to the player (e.g. by pressing 2, 2).
I found the difficultly ramped up a little strongly at first, but then it became too easy. The first three games I died very quickly on levels 2, 3 and 4 respectively. It felt painful to be slaughtered so quickly after landing, and then sent all the way back to the start. (The first level is a bit slow to keep repeating.) Basically I wanted the chance to retry the level. (Funnily you can replay the level, but only if you quit the game before the ship is destroyed!) Some arcade-style games used to allow 2 retries, and I think that could work here.
On my fourth play I understood the game better (and maybe had some luck), and I realised I could go back to earlier levels to stock up, so I slaughtered the creatures and completed the game! Perhaps having easy, medium, difficult modes could make it less painful for beginners, but add extra challenges (and secrets) for players who want to keep coming back.
I found my cannons were a bit weak. If I left them alone, they would quickly get destroyed before I could run across the map to heal them. (So my tactic was to put cannons beside the ship, and keep an engineer at the ship at all times. A bit boring!) Perhaps if the creatures did not attack the cannons (or only did so briefly) then I could be confident to place them anywhere, and they would work more like a tower defence, shooting at creatures as they pass by (and needing only occasional healing).
I was sad at the end, because I thought I could land in the wormhole. I thought I had one more location to play, but no, the game just ended on me! Perhaps make the wormhole look less like the landable planet locations. (E.g. make it larger, and not round. Don't label it like the planets are labeled.)
Anyway it was a cute and fun game to play overall. I enjoyed it. Thanks for making it!
Thanks. I did in the end just swap 1,2,3 with Shift-1, Shift-2, Shift-3. This works fine for me. I use Shift to build/act. I could recommend these as defaults for first time players.
Additional feedback! Sometimes one of my characters gets attacked off-screen while I am focusing on another one. I believe there is an indicator for that (pulsing green border?) but it would be great if it was more visible (perhaps a larger red pulse), and perhaps accompanied by a sound when it first occurs. Usually when I notice, it is too late!
Another thing that might help this is if fights lasted longer. For example, if all the actors do less damage, or all the actors have more health. That would give me time to respond when an attack happens. It would also mean less waiting between waves, because I would still be busy finishing off the previous wave! Obviously this would be a big change, but perhaps an interesting experiment.
A cool concept, and it doesn't overstays its welcome! A tutorial would be nice, but I figured out pretty much everything during my first run. Finished on second :) Also the concept can be developed further, but even in this state the game manages to entertain for a few hours.
I would like to report a bug. I made two runs of the game. In the first one everything was okay, but, in the second one, every enemy who spawned on the map (The ones who dont spawn from caves, just wander around until agroed) where a boss
I'm not positive I understand your report, but I think you're saying that one of the planets you landed on had the harder enemies wandering around to start with? This is as designed, sometimes there are groups of weaker enemies, and sometimes there are the harder enemies, but fewer of them.
Fun little game but the Mac version is almost unplayable past the 3rd or 4th planet since performance drops so much as you explore more and more of a planet
Sure, im on Catalina 10.15.6, 32 GB Ram, graphics card is Radeon pro 555X 4GB.
Unfortunately i already set my settings as low as possible on the 2nd/3rd planet due to this issue. It helped a little bit on that planet, but it wasn't a permanent fix.
Very cool idea and well polished. Definitely feels like a lot of thought and work went into the game, though if I had a single criticism it would be that the upgrades are straightforward to a fault.
This has been a very cute and very fun game. Clarity is the only thing it really struggles with. With a bit more polish in the UI/UX department I could see this being a regular play for me.
It is a wonderfull game, i really enjoyed playing, but it would be nice to have a pause time feature as the team grows it's kinda hard to manage, so i think a time freeze feature would be nice for people that can't really handdle that much pressure
So, my roomie's virus scanner found a virus in the zip file for your game… Not sure if this is a false positive, or if it was infected after arriving. Just posting it here in case you want to double check on your end, or if it is a known false positive.
Hey there, thanks for the heads up. I believe this is a false positive. I'd never heard of Segurazo so I did a search and it appears that Segurazo is itself malware that does not function as advertised, and nearly every result is people seeking help in uninstalling it:
Segurazo PUP refers to a questionable anti-virus program that is classified as a potentially unwanted program (PUP) by many legitimate anti-virus programs. According to user reports, the program installs without explicit permission from users, and is difficult to remove.
if level one difficulty is this hard i cant even begin to imagine how hard the later levels are. When i first played this game i wondered why the average session length was 30 minutes, I later found thats its because after 2 levels of being thrown to the wolves the will to want to play goes down. I will still play this game because i like a challange but i would recommend rethinking what a level meter means in terms difficulty as first planet level 1 threat is not the same as 2nd planet level 1 threat level. I think you should start with three players rather than 2 as I would be able to try a strat then just placeing down a turret and leaving an engineer there and then use the other guy to go get ore
My first three games I thought it was pretty tough, I didn't like being dropped into a difficult new level, dying and being sent back to the start.
But on my fourth game, I completed it!
My strategy was to pick up more crew members from the distress beacons. When I was low on crew or on resources, I would go back and play an earlier level planet.
I surrounded my ship with strong turrets, and kept one character repairing them. My crew couldn't fight very well, so they just had to hide and sneak past enemy lines.
I LOVE the game man! I love how you can transform into different classes/types. I also love that there are many "planets" you can visit and gather resources. the artworks of the game is great and the controls are easy. oh, and it is also addictive to play!
Had a lot of fun in From Orbit honestly. It took me a little bit to get a hang of things but I've already recorded a second episode and we get much father! :)
Select the units using left-click, and order them to move somewhere with right-click. Alternatively you can cycle through the units using the Tab key, or LB/RB when using a controller.
Hey there, because the game is currently 100% off you can download for free, but this will not grant you a Steam key. However, purchasing for any amount ($1 or more) will grant a Steam key that you can claim.
Sometimes I launch and a crew member iis left behind despite being within the evacuation range :( it’s especially galling when it happens after going to all the effort of getting a new crew member only to have the game bug out and leave it behind anyway.
Other than that game ruining problem, it’s actually pretty fun to play.
Hi Tom, thanks for trying out the game and sorry for the frustration. Is this happening when you have 5 crew members active? There's actually a limit of 4 on the ship, but this isn't especially obvious in the UI. This will be addressed in a future update.
Oh wow, I had no idea, there aren’t any clues that there’s an upper limit on workers, I just assumed you could have as many as you wanted but that it would get harder to keep them and you had to put the effort in to find them and keep them alive :(
I’d make sure any place that mentions a crew count has /4 on the end, as well as any resource caps there might be
Overall I think this is an interesting game that, with some tweaks, could be wonderful. With no tutorial, it only took me one failed mission to understand everything about the game. (I will say, a tutorial level would probably make it more accessible to people who haven't played an RTS or MOBA before.) That speaks to a simplicity of design that I really appreciate. The enemy design is simply fantastic, and learning the strategies to kite or dodge enemy attack patterns is very fun. I also really like that your attacks are projectiles as well, meaning that they can be blocked if you aren't careful. The overall look of the game is gorgeous, though by the midpoint I was starting to feel like the procgen was showing its seams a little bit.
I think the game could really benefit from some anti-frustration mechanics. For instance, take the choice of whether to build an auto-harvester for an ore node with 29 ore in it. Since the extractor costs 25, this deeply cuts into the player's income. Thus, you have to spend a good amount of the game doing not much at all, since the harvester crew type is easily the least interactive.
I understand that the systems exist to urge players not to invest everything on one planet; you need to get in, and get out, not try and hold out forever against the enemies. But if that's the case, why have the engineer class at all? I have thus far not encountered a time where it felt like building a turret or harvester was the correct choice, which is sad, because they seem like such an interesting part of the game. (It's entirely possible that once I buy the upgrades for them, or if Ore starts being more plentiful, I'll find them more useful, we'll see.)
My first thought, and this is not playtested at all, is that I would allow engineers to "salvage" a building, returning ~80% of its cost. That way, putting down a building costs 5 ore as long as you can defend it until you scrap it, which makes them much more economical. So it's expensive to use turrets as a sacrificial piece, but if you can ensure they survive, they're worth it. This also has the added benefit of making extraction exciting; if most of your Ore is tied up in buildings, you need to hold out until you can liquidate your investment before you get offworld.
I'm curious about your thought process for some of the upgrades. While there are simple health and damage upgrades, other upgrades completely change how the classes are played. The medic upgrade turns them from a slow way to recover after a fight into a valid choice in the midst of battle, which was really interesting.
Overall, I think this is a neat game! Thanks for being a part of the racial equality bundle; excited to follow your other games in the future!
I agree with the lack of a tutorial, but about everything else, did you actually beat the game? A lot of this is addressed the further you go.
For instance, take the choice of whether to build an auto-harvester for an ore node with 29 ore in it. Since the extractor costs 25, this deeply cuts into the player's income.
Don't build extractors for any deposits <40, or maybe <50, ore. If you want to go for 100% clean planets with no losses, you eventually must rely on extractors, especially for deposits >80.
I have thus far not encountered a time where it felt like building a turret or harvester was the correct choice, which is sad, because they seem like such an interesting part of the game.
I think you definitely have not beaten the game yet. If you can leave every planet without turrets with zero losses + 0 deposits left, you're unbelievably good or got insanely far den spawns.
I'll revisit it! You're right that I didn't finish it. I got like halfway through and had 4 crew, but I wasn't getting every ore node on every planet, once it got to a high enough threat level that I couldn't defend the base and gotten enough for some new upgrades I went to the next planet.
Is there a guide somewhere? There is no tutorial, and stuff like the auto resource extractor is just a waste of resources, at least early on. I also wonder if it would be better if there was at least a small chance to get resources off of killed monsters? There is little reason to kill them ever.
There's no guide apart from reading comments here, probably.
The extractor is best deployed on deposits >100.
Enemies don't drop loot when dying; any resources you may have seen were already sitting loosely on the ground around them. It's up to you to gauge whether it's worth going after them.
All of the resources are optional and are only there to prepare your crew for the final level.
Good Game, but please add more content like more Upgrades for the Defense towers, balance a little bit the Mobs and let us destroy the Spawnpoints of the Aliens.(add some little Houses etc.)
This is not a $15 game. No tutorial or help, nothing is explained. Limited minimap, limited tech tree, no story. Random generation can put the enemy spawner right next to the ship and you can not destroy it.
Starcraft Remastered is $15. That game has 3 faction with their own units and tech trees, a story, and a lot more. If you are looking for a RTS buy that instead or some other game.
Dude, this is one developer putting in a lot of time and effort. While I agree the price isn't the best, you can't compare a billion dollar company to a indie developer. They can afford to price it relatively cheap.
Even compared to other indie / small developers this is low content. Thee are a ton of free web games that have more content: Epic Battle Fantasy series of games. GemCraft series of games. Cookie Clicker. Cursed Treasure series of games. Stellar Squad, Kingdom Rush series of games. Rebuild. Creeper World series. Also there are many small / indie developers who have made paid games with more content: Terraria. Stardew Valley. Night in the Woods. Oxenfree. FTL: Faster Than Light. The Binding of Isaac. Deeponia series of games. Celeste.
You can go down the list then: there are literally thousands of games out there that charge as much as or higher than From Orbit that don't even have half as much content. Go rail on them.
You should also only be referencing games that were made by one person. Deponia was made by a 90-employee company. Not all devs can be one-hit wonders like ConcernedApe behind Stardew Valley, nor should they be expected to.
That said, I agree that From Orbit is overpriced for its content. I thought the black hole at the end of the system map was just one segment of eight, but that was the end of the game. So, I'm glad I was able to play it at no cost, but I'm also not complaining.
This game is sort of a hybrid of tower defense + real-time strategy. Have you played any of these types of games?
You have four workers who can morph between different roles, whose descriptions show when you hover your mouse over them in the top-left. Type 1 is the Defender, the only one who can attack enemies, for example.
Use the workers to harvest as many resources as possible across the planet. Have them attack enemies, heal each other, and build turrets/repair the ship as needed. Don't lose your ship and try to not let anyone die. Build one turret next to your ship per (threat level - 1). Then at the system map, use the resources you gathered to upgrade your stuff.
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I'm having an issue. I just installed this on Linux, more specifically Debian Unstable, x86_64, but with i386 architecture support as well (for Steam and Steam games).
This game launches, and I see a menu screen with an animation of a rocket and with music, and there's a custom mouse pointer. However, clicking on the buttons has no effect. Using cursor keys doesn't seem to do anything either. I have to switch to a console window to close the game.
You need to figure out how to launch it out of fullscreen mode, idk how, but that's what causes the issue usually
I bought this game a good while back, but just wanted to say I really like it! Very fun to multitask in. I recorded a full playthrough for anyone interested in seeing it beginning to end without commentary (pretty much taking a straight path to the end):
The only quality of life improvements that would be nice is being able to click on the minimap to move the camera around, and a hotkey for a 5th worker. I did change the 'Shift+Number' unit selection to just be a number which makes it a lot easier.
Good work!
Feedback: It's a fun game but I have some suggestions. (Maybe for your next game!)
Lots of people have mentioned issues with the key layout. Since we switch character more often than we build, I don't think it makes sense to use Shift when switching character. We could put characters on plain 1,2,3,4, and for building/launching we could use Shift-1,2,3,4 or 7,8,9,0 or letter keys.
Sometimes I wanted to bring the character to the part of the map I am currently looking at (e.g. to meet up with a crew mate). But as soon as I select him, the camera moves to his location! One solution to that might be: Tab always jumps direct to the character's location. But when pressing 1,2,3,4 to select a character, the camera selects the player but doesn't jump to their location. Then I could press 2 and right-click, to bring the character onto the screen. If the key is pressed a second time (when the character is already selected), then the camera can jump to the player (e.g. by pressing 2, 2).
I found the difficultly ramped up a little strongly at first, but then it became too easy. The first three games I died very quickly on levels 2, 3 and 4 respectively. It felt painful to be slaughtered so quickly after landing, and then sent all the way back to the start. (The first level is a bit slow to keep repeating.) Basically I wanted the chance to retry the level. (Funnily you can replay the level, but only if you quit the game before the ship is destroyed!) Some arcade-style games used to allow 2 retries, and I think that could work here.
On my fourth play I understood the game better (and maybe had some luck), and I realised I could go back to earlier levels to stock up, so I slaughtered the creatures and completed the game! Perhaps having easy, medium, difficult modes could make it less painful for beginners, but add extra challenges (and secrets) for players who want to keep coming back.
I found my cannons were a bit weak. If I left them alone, they would quickly get destroyed before I could run across the map to heal them. (So my tactic was to put cannons beside the ship, and keep an engineer at the ship at all times. A bit boring!) Perhaps if the creatures did not attack the cannons (or only did so briefly) then I could be confident to place them anywhere, and they would work more like a tower defence, shooting at creatures as they pass by (and needing only occasional healing).
I was sad at the end, because I thought I could land in the wormhole. I thought I had one more location to play, but no, the game just ended on me! Perhaps make the wormhole look less like the landable planet locations. (E.g. make it larger, and not round. Don't label it like the planets are labeled.)
Anyway it was a cute and fun game to play overall. I enjoyed it. Thanks for making it!
Thanks for the feedback!
If you hadn't already found it, it is possible to customize the keybindings from the Options screen in order to change the character selection keys.
Thanks. I did in the end just swap 1,2,3 with Shift-1, Shift-2, Shift-3. This works fine for me. I use Shift to build/act. I could recommend these as defaults for first time players.
Additional feedback! Sometimes one of my characters gets attacked off-screen while I am focusing on another one. I believe there is an indicator for that (pulsing green border?) but it would be great if it was more visible (perhaps a larger red pulse), and perhaps accompanied by a sound when it first occurs. Usually when I notice, it is too late!
Another thing that might help this is if fights lasted longer. For example, if all the actors do less damage, or all the actors have more health. That would give me time to respond when an attack happens. It would also mean less waiting between waves, because I would still be busy finishing off the previous wave! Obviously this would be a big change, but perhaps an interesting experiment.
The game is cool and interesting. I recommend playing. I have one idea for an update. Adding a new turret that deals radius damage.
Do you think you could compile it for x86_64 for linux as well? Thanks!
支持中文吗
я в восторге от игры. однозначно рекомендую
из минусов: не хватает обучения в начале. Пришлось несколько раз проиграть, чтобы понять механику и логику
чуть позже, в комментарий скину следующие серии
______
I am delighted with this game. I definitely recommend
lack of training at the beginning. I had to replay it several times to understand the mechanics and logic
later will add new series in comment to this post
Thanks for playing!
со второй серии пошла жара
____
the battle began from this episode
SPACE IS SOOOOO COOOOOOOOOL
Nice video, thanks for playing! :)
A cool concept, and it doesn't overstays its welcome! A tutorial would be nice, but I figured out pretty much everything during my first run. Finished on second :) Also the concept can be developed further, but even in this state the game manages to entertain for a few hours.
I would like to report a bug. I made two runs of the game. In the first one everything was okay, but, in the second one, every enemy who spawned on the map (The ones who dont spawn from caves, just wander around until agroed) where a boss
I'm not positive I understand your report, but I think you're saying that one of the planets you landed on had the harder enemies wandering around to start with? This is as designed, sometimes there are groups of weaker enemies, and sometimes there are the harder enemies, but fewer of them.
No, no. Every wanderer enemy in every planet after my second new game was a boss. Normal enemys only spawned from the caves.
I see... I think you just got (un)lucky :) It is random, so it's possible it might happen sometimes.
Fun game, thanks a lot :)
Fun little game but the Mac version is almost unplayable past the 3rd or 4th planet since performance drops so much as you explore more and more of a planet
Sorry that the performance is poor on your machine, can you provide me your system specifications?
Something you can try is reducing the graphics resolution or quality level in the Options, to see if that helps with performance.
Sure, im on Catalina 10.15.6, 32 GB Ram, graphics card is Radeon pro 555X 4GB.
Unfortunately i already set my settings as low as possible on the 2nd/3rd planet due to this issue. It helped a little bit on that planet, but it wasn't a permanent fix.
Привет. Игра классная, но без обучения немного трудно освоиться. Успехов в развитии этой игр
i wish there are tutorials. I had a hard time figuring out the controls. I really enjoy it.
Unzip the game to a folder of your choice, and double click FromOrbit.exe
~ I really enjoy the ability to switch classes on the fly.
~ Would be useful if a medic could revive a fallen crew member rather than just lose them.
~ A sandbox mode would be fun.
~ With the ship and crew having equal importance, ship upgrades would be useful.
how to play?
I'm totally lost, too. I don't play many RTS games, so all I was able to figure out was how to move my units.
Thanks for checkout out the game! Since a few people have asked, I've put together a How To Play video. I hope it helps.
Very cool idea and well polished. Definitely feels like a lot of thought and work went into the game, though if I had a single criticism it would be that the upgrades are straightforward to a fault.
This has been a very cute and very fun game. Clarity is the only thing it really struggles with. With a bit more polish in the UI/UX department I could see this being a regular play for me.
It is a wonderfull game, i really enjoyed playing, but it would be nice to have a pause time feature as the team grows it's kinda hard to manage, so i think a time freeze feature would be nice for people that can't really handdle that much pressure
So far i like this game a lot, the only thing missing were control instructions
So, my roomie's virus scanner found a virus in the zip file for your game…
Not sure if this is a false positive, or if it was infected after arriving.
Just posting it here in case you want to double check on your end, or if it is a known false positive.
Hey there, thanks for the heads up. I believe this is a false positive. I'd never heard of Segurazo so I did a search and it appears that Segurazo is itself malware that does not function as advertised, and nearly every result is people seeking help in uninstalling it:
That's not good…
Thanks for letting me know, I'll tell my roomie.
if level one difficulty is this hard i cant even begin to imagine how hard the later levels are. When i first played this game i wondered why the average session length was 30 minutes, I later found thats its because after 2 levels of being thrown to the wolves the will to want to play goes down. I will still play this game because i like a challange but i would recommend rethinking what a level meter means in terms difficulty as first planet level 1 threat is not the same as 2nd planet level 1 threat level. I think you should start with three players rather than 2 as I would be able to try a strat then just placeing down a turret and leaving an engineer there and then use the other guy to go get ore
My first three games I thought it was pretty tough, I didn't like being dropped into a difficult new level, dying and being sent back to the start.
But on my fourth game, I completed it!
My strategy was to pick up more crew members from the distress beacons. When I was low on crew or on resources, I would go back and play an earlier level planet.
I surrounded my ship with strong turrets, and kept one character repairing them. My crew couldn't fight very well, so they just had to hide and sneak past enemy lines.
I LOVE the game man! I love how you can transform into different classes/types. I also love that there are many "planets" you can visit and gather resources. the artworks of the game is great and the controls are easy. oh, and it is also addictive to play!
p.s game starts at 10:01
really fun RTS-TD hybrid i have not gotten far into the game but its a fun-tough game, i love it.
or whatever they are
how do i move the people
Select the units using left-click, and order them to move somewhere with right-click. Alternatively you can cycle through the units using the Tab key, or LB/RB when using a controller.
oh yay!a 100*/. off sale!(i have not played it yet though.)
My Secruity system norton looks at this game as a risk why Is that.
I couldn't say, possibly due to Unity being upgraded to a recently released version which Norton is not yet familiar with.
This game shows up on https://itch.io/games/newest/on-sale/platform-windows/steam-key even though there isn't a Steam key? Or is there with minimum payment? I couldn't find anything...
I have the game for over 2 months now and I didn't have the chance to try it out. But the graphics look cool! Nice work!
Steam keys are not given if you don't pay full price for any products on itch.io.
Yeah I know but can I get one if I pay >=$14.99? I can't find a mention of this.
Oh, I believe you should, yeah! Maybe contact the dev somehow to confirm this.
Hey there, because the game is currently 100% off you can download for free, but this will not grant you a Steam key. However, purchasing for any amount ($1 or more) will grant a Steam key that you can claim.
Sometimes I launch and a crew member iis left behind despite being within the evacuation range :( it’s especially galling when it happens after going to all the effort of getting a new crew member only to have the game bug out and leave it behind anyway.
Other than that game ruining problem, it’s actually pretty fun to play.
Hi Tom, thanks for trying out the game and sorry for the frustration. Is this happening when you have 5 crew members active? There's actually a limit of 4 on the ship, but this isn't especially obvious in the UI. This will be addressed in a future update.
Oh wow, I had no idea, there aren’t any clues that there’s an upper limit on workers, I just assumed you could have as many as you wanted but that it would get harder to keep them and you had to put the effort in to find them and keep them alive :(
I’d make sure any place that mentions a crew count has /4 on the end, as well as any resource caps there might be
If you mouse over the ship launch buttons in the bottom-left during play, it warns that it can only take four crew members.
How to increase the crew?
Thanks, nice indie game.
I found one more crew lvl at planet lvl 2 with distress signal, you use engineer at a special place on the planet to find one extra.
Overall I think this is an interesting game that, with some tweaks, could be wonderful. With no tutorial, it only took me one failed mission to understand everything about the game. (I will say, a tutorial level would probably make it more accessible to people who haven't played an RTS or MOBA before.) That speaks to a simplicity of design that I really appreciate. The enemy design is simply fantastic, and learning the strategies to kite or dodge enemy attack patterns is very fun. I also really like that your attacks are projectiles as well, meaning that they can be blocked if you aren't careful. The overall look of the game is gorgeous, though by the midpoint I was starting to feel like the procgen was showing its seams a little bit.
I think the game could really benefit from some anti-frustration mechanics. For instance, take the choice of whether to build an auto-harvester for an ore node with 29 ore in it. Since the extractor costs 25, this deeply cuts into the player's income. Thus, you have to spend a good amount of the game doing not much at all, since the harvester crew type is easily the least interactive.
I understand that the systems exist to urge players not to invest everything on one planet; you need to get in, and get out, not try and hold out forever against the enemies. But if that's the case, why have the engineer class at all? I have thus far not encountered a time where it felt like building a turret or harvester was the correct choice, which is sad, because they seem like such an interesting part of the game. (It's entirely possible that once I buy the upgrades for them, or if Ore starts being more plentiful, I'll find them more useful, we'll see.)
My first thought, and this is not playtested at all, is that I would allow engineers to "salvage" a building, returning ~80% of its cost. That way, putting down a building costs 5 ore as long as you can defend it until you scrap it, which makes them much more economical. So it's expensive to use turrets as a sacrificial piece, but if you can ensure they survive, they're worth it. This also has the added benefit of making extraction exciting; if most of your Ore is tied up in buildings, you need to hold out until you can liquidate your investment before you get offworld.
I'm curious about your thought process for some of the upgrades. While there are simple health and damage upgrades, other upgrades completely change how the classes are played. The medic upgrade turns them from a slow way to recover after a fight into a valid choice in the midst of battle, which was really interesting.
Overall, I think this is a neat game! Thanks for being a part of the racial equality bundle; excited to follow your other games in the future!
Thanks for the feedback!
I agree with the lack of a tutorial, but about everything else, did you actually beat the game? A lot of this is addressed the further you go.
Don't build extractors for any deposits <40, or maybe <50, ore. If you want to go for 100% clean planets with no losses, you eventually must rely on extractors, especially for deposits >80.
I think you definitely have not beaten the game yet. If you can leave every planet without turrets with zero losses + 0 deposits left, you're unbelievably good or got insanely far den spawns.
I'll revisit it! You're right that I didn't finish it. I got like halfway through and had 4 crew, but I wasn't getting every ore node on every planet, once it got to a high enough threat level that I couldn't defend the base and gotten enough for some new upgrades I went to the next planet.
I love the concept, but it could be much much more better if it is polished.
Is there a guide somewhere? There is no tutorial, and stuff like the auto resource extractor is just a waste of resources, at least early on. I also wonder if it would be better if there was at least a small chance to get resources off of killed monsters? There is little reason to kill them ever.
There's no guide apart from reading comments here, probably.
The extractor is best deployed on deposits >100.
Enemies don't drop loot when dying; any resources you may have seen were already sitting loosely on the ground around them. It's up to you to gauge whether it's worth going after them.
All of the resources are optional and are only there to prepare your crew for the final level.
Good Game, but please add more content like more Upgrades for the Defense towers, balance a little bit the Mobs and let us destroy the Spawnpoints of the Aliens.(add some little Houses etc.)
This is not a $15 game. No tutorial or help, nothing is explained. Limited minimap, limited tech tree, no story. Random generation can put the enemy spawner right next to the ship and you can not destroy it.
Starcraft Remastered is $15. That game has 3 faction with their own units and tech trees, a story, and a lot more. If you are looking for a RTS buy that instead or some other game.
Dude its free
It's on sale now. The regular price is $15. There are games with far more content and polish for that price.
Dude, this is one developer putting in a lot of time and effort. While I agree the price isn't the best, you can't compare a billion dollar company to a indie developer. They can afford to price it relatively cheap.
Even compared to other indie / small developers this is low content. Thee are a ton of free web games that have more content: Epic Battle Fantasy series of games. GemCraft series of games. Cookie Clicker. Cursed Treasure series of games. Stellar Squad, Kingdom Rush series of games. Rebuild. Creeper World series. Also there are many small / indie developers who have made paid games with more content: Terraria. Stardew Valley. Night in the Woods. Oxenfree. FTL: Faster Than Light. The Binding of Isaac. Deeponia series of games. Celeste.
You can go down the list then: there are literally thousands of games out there that charge as much as or higher than From Orbit that don't even have half as much content. Go rail on them.
You should also only be referencing games that were made by one person. Deponia was made by a 90-employee company. Not all devs can be one-hit wonders like ConcernedApe behind Stardew Valley, nor should they be expected to.
That said, I agree that From Orbit is overpriced for its content. I thought the black hole at the end of the system map was just one segment of eight, but that was the end of the game. So, I'm glad I was able to play it at no cost, but I'm also not complaining.
Is there any tutorial? I feel completely lost.
This game is sort of a hybrid of tower defense + real-time strategy. Have you played any of these types of games?
You have four workers who can morph between different roles, whose descriptions show when you hover your mouse over them in the top-left. Type 1 is the Defender, the only one who can attack enemies, for example.
Use the workers to harvest as many resources as possible across the planet. Have them attack enemies, heal each other, and build turrets/repair the ship as needed. Don't lose your ship and try to not let anyone die. Build one turret next to your ship per (threat level - 1). Then at the system map, use the resources you gathered to upgrade your stuff.